


but a walking shadow

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:45:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1407061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John rescues Replicator Weir from the space gate.  Written for Sparktober</p>
            </blockquote>





	but a walking shadow

“You can’t come home,” John says, and Elizabeth appreciates that he has the balls to look her in the eyes when he says that. “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth.”

She tries to smile. “I’m grateful that you came for me at all.”

John does look away then, and Elizabeth knows she’s hurt him. Part of her is glad. _No man left behind_ , she thinks. _Never abandon your people_ , she thinks and is overwhelmed with the memory of a thousand stars wheeling by as she slowly froze, her vision fading before the light of the Gate had even winked out.

John takes her to a planet with an underground Ancient research facility. He’s stocked it with food Elizabeth isn’t sure she even needs anymore, clothes, a laptop, soap. The facility itself is offline, but Elizabeth thinks she might be able to do something about that. She doesn’t tell John.

“Don’t make me regret this,” he says when he leaves, and Elizabeth resists the urge to slap his face.

She spends the next few weeks alone and very, very angry. She has nothing to break but her body, and so she does, bruising her knuckles against the wall over and over, the wounds healing over almost before she can feel the pain. “After everything we went through!” she screams to no one. “After every goddamn thing! They betrayed me!”

Indulging this rage feels important, wonderful, until it doesn’t any longer, and then Elizabeth is just tired. By the time John comes to her again, she is weary and resigned.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back,” John says. “Things have been kind of hairy lately.” 

Elizabeth doesn’t ask. She’s not ready to care again yet. Instead she shows John the progress she’s made repairing the Ancient computer system. He’s impressed and maybe a little afraid of what she can do, but he helps her rewrite the power couplings and shore up the conduits before he leaves.

On his next visit, John brings pictures of Torrin, and Elizabeth is ready to look at them. She sees so much of Teyla in him, this beautiful, beautiful child, and Elizabeth’s arms ache to hold him.

“According to Ronon,” John says, “Chuck has the hots for Miko, and Keller thinks she likes him back. Odds are three to one in favor of a happy couple.”

“Nice to see that some things haven’t changed. I often wonder just what exactly Radek did before he joined the Stargate program. The man makes a suspiciously good bookie.”

John says, “Pigeons. I think it had something to do with pigeons.”

Elizabeth punches him in the arm. “Stop it. You’re making that up.”

“I am not,” John says and grins that boyish grin of his, the one that makes Elizabeth weak in the knees every single time. “Carter told me. He’s got this weird thing with pigeons. I think he kind of creeped Carter out describing the magnificence of pigeons to her.”

“Right,” Elizabeth says. “Samantha Carter. My replacement.” She tries very hard to keep her voice light, her expression even, but she doesn’t think she’s terribly successful. After that, conversation is stilted and strange. John leaves before long, and Elizabeth is once again alone with her thoughts.

One day John comes to her with his face all bruised, one eye black and nearly swollen shut. He won’t tell her what happened when she asks. “I don’t want to talk about it,” John says, and then he reaches out to her with trembling hands and holds her close. 

For the first time in what seems like forever, Elizabeth feels truly alive. Her skin is electric, sparking in every place that John touches her. When they make love, Elizabeth feels like a real girl again, like a person, like someone who’d been lost but has found her way once more. 

John falls asleep curled on his side, his legs tangled up with Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth watches him breathe and tries to forget how much it hurts that the only time John has taken her to bed, she’s not even wearing the right body. 

“Do they know?” she asks him when he wakes. “Do the rest of them know about me?”

John shakes his head.

“Not even the team? Not Teyla? Not Rodney?”

“No.” 

He kisses her when he leaves this time.

Sometimes Elizabeth dreams about being scattered across subspace, her atoms buffeted by cosmic debris, her consciousness spread so thin she nearly loses herself in the white noise of the cosmos. She has nightmares about walking through the Gate into space, nightmares in which her lungs implode and the capillaries on her skin burst, blood floating away from her dying body in perfectly round globules. She has died more times than the universe has the right to expect of anyone but Daniel Jackson. She has sacrificed everything more than once, given her all over and over again, and none of that has broken her. But Elizabeth does not believe she can survive this exile, this hiding, this secrecy and deception. After all that she‘s been through, Elizabeth knows she will finally break on John’s guilt.


End file.
